Thursday, February 12, 2009

Thursday. 23 days till the Arnolds!

The pace is quickening as we approach the Arnolds. Our famous purple belt, Mr Hyde, ran the class while Big Dawg was kicking ass with the MMA fighters.

We ran HIIT sprints along with several inhumane strength excercises for warm up. See previous blog entries for descriptions of how tough of workouts we are having lately. This was no different. Clint says he is putting together a "team from hell" for the arnolds, and he's not messin' around.

We worked triangle drills for much of the class. Mr. Hyde showed his preferred method, which is throwing your top leg immediately into triangle position, positioning it parrallel along back of the opponents neck and shoulders. You keep your ass off the ground, forcing the enemy to carry all of your weight on the back of the neck. Ideally you also use the momentem of this thrust to move your body to the side of the opponent (looking at their ear). This is different then a lazy triangle where you attack straight on, have to break your man down, have to open your legs to get to the side, then try and finish. Hydes method does all the hard work in one step. We've been doing it in no-gi class, and I enjoyed working it.

The next variation that Ryan showed was AWESOME for me. It is a counter when the opponent escapes the triangle by moving his head on the outside of your leg. You can switch to a inverted armlock from this position pretty easy. Its pretty tough to describe using words for me, but basically you go to an almost omaplata position (and in fact you can get an omaplata from here as well).

We finished class with live rolling, with running in between and some sprints at the very end.

I LOVED this inverted armbar and need to practice it to have a transition off of a failed triangle that I never had before.